GUEST COLUMNISTS

• The 6 Pillars Of Effectively Managing Up In Clinical Development

  Managing up, regardless of title, can be a challenging skill to master from the onset. Laurie Halloran and Michelle Pratt of Halloran Consulting share their 6 key lessons that they've learned along their careers in clinical development. This article will help you manage your relationships with your colleagues in a more senior role, while also positioning yourself for success.

• Selecting The Best Human Factors Method For Your Medical Or Drug Delivery Device Evaluation

  A robust human factors process has become critical to product optimization and market competitiveness for medical devices and drug delivery devices, but not all companies have the resources, funding, or time to conduct such user studies. This article from Genentech's head of human factors engineering examines the three major categories of evaluation that you should consider, the pros and cons of each, and how to select study participants.

• The 8-Step Checklist To Write Effective Investigation Reports

  It’s always best to prevent the need to investigate a non-compliance, but if you experience a non-compliance, it’s necessary to quickly and effectively perform an investigation. The investigation report needs to be clearly understandable to anyone reviewing the report, and hopefully you'll also learn enough to make sure the non-compliance doesn't recur.

• Rare Diseases: How To Leverage Social Media For Patient Analysis

  Due to insufficient sample sizes and a lack of granularity, traditional data analysis of rare diseases produces unreliable results. What can you do to learn more about patients with rare diseases? Leverage data from social media and other online sources! The internet offers a trove of public data waiting to be tapped into.

• FDA Releases Guidance On CMC Changes To An Approved Application: Certain Biological Products

  At the end of June, the FDA released a new guidance to assist applicants and manufacturers of certain licensed biological products in determining which reporting category is appropriate for a change in chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) information to an approved biologics license application. This article summarizes the guidance.

• Medtech Innovation: 3 Strategies For Leveraging Agile Methodologies

  While medtech firms have had proven success with scaling and short bursts of innovation from special projects and acquisitions, many firms have struggled to achieve a steady stream of disruptive innovation. This article provides three strategies for leveraging agile methodologies for better innovation.

• eClinical Systems Post-COVID: Have You Realized Your Digital Transformation?

  When the pandemic started to impact our communities, what happened next exemplified the commitment and passion of TMF professionals, clinical researchers, and the pharmaceutical industry as a whole. Now, as the U.S. is in a summer characterized less by COVID and more by time spent with family and friends, are we willing to face COVID’s hard lessons?

• Designing A Patient-Centric Digital Ecosystem: Strategies For Cell And Gene Therapy CxOs

  Cell and gene therapy (CGT) production is costly, complex, and high-risk; in part, because most supply chain and manufacturing processes involve multiple stakeholders and facilities. In the first article of this series we discussed how CGT adoption and success hinges on early planning to scale manufacturing and supply. This article describes strategies to enable a patient-centric digital ecosystem and capabilities to support CGTs before, during, and after the order life cycle.